


Five reasons

by Adrenalineshots



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Daddy Gil, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots
Summary: This is not a five things plus one kind of deal. If anything, this is less. Malcolm comes to an important realization as he bleeds out in the aftermath of a bad decision.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	Five reasons

Malcolm pressed his fingers hard against his belly, closing his eyes as a flash of white, blinding pain assaulted his senses, taking over his whole world. He didn’t have to look down to know it was bad. Even with both his hands clasped tightly over the wound, he could feel warm blood slipping past his fingers like hot lava, burning everything in its path.

His feet staggered, straight ground behaving like dunes in the desert, shifty and unstead. Or maybe that was just him.

He had lost  _ some _ blood, but still not enough to start worrying about unconsciousness in the next couple of minutes. He could still do it. All he needed was to reach outside before he lost his battle with consciousness. And gravity.

He had been a fool. Hissing in pain at every step that he took, feeling his insides jolting and shifting under his hands as he tried to keep everything inside, Malcolm was more than aware that he had been the ultimate fool for many, many reasons.

Number one being the fact that he had failed to call for backup. Again.

In his defense, Malcolm had been pretty sure that searching the abandoned building was going to be the safest bit of the whole case. After all, they were dealing with a bomber who liked to leave his little  _ gifts _ in the oddest and most innocent of places, like the milk aisle at the supermarket -as he had done the last time- or the B section at the library. 

A dilapidated, half crumbled, abandoned building in the outskirts of the city was as far from the killer’s MO as possible. It also happened to be the place where the suspect had grown up. And the place where he was currently hiding.

Of course Malcolm couldn’t have guessed that last bit as he called for a cab and went to search the place on his own, hoping to find some inside information on the killer’s past.

Instead, he had found the man himself.

Number two had been thinking that he could take out the killer by surprise. In his own turf. Without stumbling over some kind of post-apocalyptic alarm system that the killer -a deeply paranoid individual, according to Malcolm’s own profile- had spread over all the building’s entry points.

As Malcolm felt the wire snap against his leg, he had half expected to explode before he could take his next breath. Instead, the wire had alerted the killer to his presence. And the profiler ended up being the one surprised.

They had fought. Malcolm had almost gotten the upper hand, despite the fact that the killer was a head taller than him and almost twice his weight in pure muscle.

He had almost won.  _ Almost. _

If he hadn’t slipped on the greasy floor and fallen down, Malcolm was sure he would have won. Instead, he had hit his head hard on the naked cement floor, the world going gray for a second too long, long enough for the killer to get all over him. 

Malcolm had regained his senses to the unpleasant feeling of unfamiliar hands groping his body, as the killer frantically searched the profiler for any weapons, shouting in his face the entire time, demanding to know if he was alone. In the midst of the confusion, the killer had taken out the only thing he could find, Malcolm’s phone, and tossed it out the window.

Number three was assuming that his profile was completely accurate and without flaws.

Because if that had been true, Malcolm would have been able to talk his way out of that losing situation and convince the killer not only to let him go, but to surrender himself. He knew he could have done it, if he hadn’t started off by saying the wrong thing.

_ This is not your fault. _

Because if his profile had been right, the killer’s need to build bombs and use them was a compulsion, something that he could not control, fruit of a deep seated need to make right a wrong.

Malcolm had been convinced that, in the lack of either a political or religious cause as the driving impulse for his bombings, the killer was doing it because of some odd, displaced need for retribuition. 

The killer’s parents had died in an explosion, fifteen years before, in that very same building. Back then, it had already been falling apart, hardly meeting most of the security requirements for any home. A simple gas leak had caused the death of seven people that day and changed a man’s life forever.

But it hadn’t been about revenge at all. As it turned out, the killer just liked to make things blow up, as he proudly pointed out to Malcolm as he tried to gouge his eyes out. His parents, and half the building, had merely been his first victims.

Which made Malcom’s whole profile crumble and fall apart. The only thing that the profiler could be sure of was the notion that, as the killer pulled out a gun on him, he was going to shoot to kill. 

Number four...Malcom stumbled, his balance lost as the ground came rushing up to meet his face. His hands, painted red, slipped against the floor, as he somehow managed to move them fast enough to spare himself a broken nose.

The profiler rested his head against the cold ground. He couldn’t remember the fourth reason for him being a fool. In fact, he was having some trouble remembering why he was rushing outside at all.

Ah, yes...his phone.

If it had, somehow, managed to survive a two story fall, it was his only chance to call for help before he bled to death.

A sense of cold numbness had slowly started to spread all over him, somewhat dulling the pain and making everything look less sharp, blurry and distant. For a moment, Malcolm almost welcomed the feeling. In that blurry, softened world, he didn’t hurt with every breath.

Malcolm laughed, the deranged sound echoing in the dead silence, the empty building laughing back at him. He was pretty sure he had a concussion too, so it was impossible to know if what he was feeling was  _ just _ shock setting in, from the bullet wound, or simply his brain bleeding out, from the head wound.

Number four. He had failed to duck.  _ Obviously _ .

Movies and TV shows make it all look so easy, dodging bullets like they’re basketball balls, big and round and so effortlessly catchable. But ‘easy’ was not even close to an accurate description of what it felt like to be on the other end of a shooting gun, adrenaline pumping into your heart, running away while someone tries to hit you, knowing the exact cost of making the wrong move. 

Desperate. 

Sheer dumb luck. 

Foolish.

Those were better adjectives. Pointless also worked, because in the end, a bullet would always run faster.

At first, Malcolm had barely felt it. He had almost swatted at the prickly feeling in his lower back, thinking some bug had bitten him. Then the pain had really kicked in, not in the back, but in the front, a few inches right from his belly button. 

Looking down had only made things worse. The bullet had ripped through him on its way out like a raging bull, tearing down muscle, skin and clothing as it went. His clothes were already soaking wet, white shirt quickly becoming dark red and leaking onto the waist of his pants. Still, there had been no time to panic or consider how serious the wound might be.

The profiler had kept on running, nothing but sheer willpower keeping him on his feet, knowing that the next bullet would steal all of his chances of escaping alive. As it was, he wasn’t so sure that the first bullet hadn’t done the job already.

He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t think. He was a mouse, desperately running in circles inside the maze where the killer lived. It had been nothing short of a miracle that, instead of finding a way out, Malcolm had stumbled across the killer’s workshop.

Number five. He should have kept on running. Instead, Malcolm had decided to make his stand right there and then, behind the plastic covered table where the killer built his bombs, explosive materials scattered all over the place. There were photos stuck to the wall with duct tape, a number of familiar -and crowded- places where the killer planned to aim his next hits. 

Malcolm’s hiding spot behind a workstation filled with sensitive material gave the killer pause. He enjoyed blowing other people up, not himself.

From what the police had figured, the killer used a modified , very unstable version of C4 in his bombs, one that could be weaved into any sort of material, taking any shape and form. So, when Malcolm grabbed the innocent, white porcelain cat from the table, he had high hopes that it was more than just a tacky figurine.

It did cross his mind that, if he was right and that figurine was actually the killer’s next bomb, there was a very good chance that they could both die in the explosion. But as far as Malcolm was concerned at the time, if his choice was between dying on his own or taking the killer with him and saving all of his future victims, there was not much to think about. Easy pick.

He tossed the porcelain cat at the killer. As the room exploded in a ball of fire, Malcolm had felt victorious for a short moment before the force of the blast threw him into the next room. He had been right. For the first time that night, he had been right.

Malcolm pressed his hand against the bullet wound, tears escaping unbidden from his eyes as it felt like he was stabbing himself with an axe. The contact did little for the blood pouring out, but the pain helped to push away the imminent threat of slipping away into oblivion. He couldn’t pass out yet, he needed to find his phone and call...there was a number he needed to call, but for the life of him, the profiler had no idea which. 

He decided that, given the circumstances, he was entitled to deal with one problem at a time. First, he needed to get up and walk, or at least crawl, outside. Smoke was already starting to build up and he could barely see a foot ahead of him.

Malcolm was close, he knew he had to be...he could feel the faint wisp of fresh air from outside.

He stumbled forward, the hot air surrounding him quickly drying away the sweat and tears from Malcolm’s face. He needed to find that phone, fast. He knew his grip on reality was slipping fast and he couldn’t take the risk of stopping now.

But it was the middle of the night and the only light he had to guide him was the fire that had erupted in the wake of the exploding cat, as he looked for a fragile phone that might have had, or not, survived its rough landing.

The profiler fell to his knees, strength abandoning the ship like a coward as his body finally realized what an impossible task Malcolm had set for himself. A fool’s errand.

Still, his fingers fumbled around, searching the dirt for the smooth surface of a phone. There was nothing there.

Abandoning all hope of making the one call that would have saved his life, Malcolm laid down on the ground. There was grass underneath him, soft and lush, smelling of earth and life. And smoke.

He turned to lie on his back, looking up. The bright orange glow from the burning building painted the whole world in amber tones, sparks floating around the blackness above like fireflies. It was almost beautiful.

There was a fire raging above him, and yet all that Malcolm could feel was cold. He shivered, wishing that he had brought a warmer coat with him.

He couldn’t remember what number he was supposed to call, but there was a number that Malcolm never forgot. He could dial it in his sleep. He  _ had _ dialed it in his sleep before.

He wanted to call Gil so badly. Malcolm knew he had been a fool for not calling the older man before running off on his own. And now he had no phone and no time left.

Gil would never know how sorry Malcolm was for being such a fool. For letting him down. For dying alone in the middle of nowhere without saying goodbye.

~@~

Gil didn’t usually join the fire department on their runs to put out fires. As the head of the precinct‘s detectives, the Lieutenant usually had enough metaphorical fires of his own to put out without having to chase the real ones.

But dispatch had sent out the alert about an explosion on a location related to their latest case and Gil had been notified.

Anyone else hearing that an address vaguely related to an open case about a serial killer who liked to use bombs would assume that, perhaps, they had gotten lucky for once, and the killer had blown himself up on his own. Gil, however, knew that the fire could only mean one thing.

Malcolm had gone off on his own and gotten in trouble. It was a bit of a leap in logic, since the address belonged to the killer’s past and had only been discussed by the team as background information, but Gil knew the profiler.

There was no doubt in his mind that Malcolm was at the center of this mess. One call to the kid’s phone and his suspicions were proven right, as the call went straight to voicemail. Malcolm always picked up, even if it was the middle of the night.  _ Especially _ if it was the middle of the night.

Gil didn’t bother dressing, just grabbed his badge and car keys and ran out the door. At the bottom of his stomach, disappointment was slowly being replaced by concern and the unshakable feeling that something very bad had happened. It was the same feeling he had gotten the last time he had driven Jackie to the hospital. 

That time, he had returned home later, but she had not.

Malcolm had had some very close calls on the Lieutenant's watch, calls scary enough for Gil to consider cutting short their work association and send the kid home, where he would be safe. 

And miserable.

Knowing that being pushed away from his work would make Malcolm miserable enough to risk his own health had been the only reason why Gil kept resisting his impulses. Why he kept allowing Malcolm to risk his life, despite the number of reasons he had to send him away.

Reason number one being that the kid was reckless as hell. Imprudent. And with a deep seeded allergy to calling for backup. 

Time and time again, Gil had watched as Malcolm had tried to do everything on his own, forgetting that he had a team on his side, that he should take some care with his own life.

This time had been no different. Instead of going home and sleeping, as Gil had ordered him to do, the profiler had probably decided that he needed to take a look around the ruins of the killer’s childhood home and gotten himself in trouble.

As the Lieutenant pulled his car at the sight of the blazing fire, he could feel his heart freeze inside his chest in terror. Trouble wasn’t quite enough to describe what he was seeing. 

Number two, Malcolm never knew when he was in well over his head. Looking at the building now, Gil couldn’t tell which part was damage caused by the original explosion and which had happened that night. The whole place was in ruins, in danger of collapsing and engulfed in flames. The firefighters were all on the outside, their captain shouting at anyone who tried going inside.

Gil was well aware that he currently didn’t look much of a condecorated, head of a respected police precinct Lieutenant. But as he walked to the fire department captain in his stripes’ pajamas and coat, armed with nothing more than his badge and a very bad feeling, Gil couldn’t have cared less. “Any casualties?” he asked, flashing his ID so the man wouldn’t completely dismiss him.

The captain barely blinked at the sight, so used to seeing people caught with their pants down that he had probably stopped registering what anyone was wearing a long time ago.

“Couldn’t find anyone, Lieutenant Arroyo,” he answered, keeping one eye on his people. “As far as we know, the building has been empty for years and right now, it’s nothing short of suicide to go inside. The whole damn place is ready to crumble down any second now.”

Looking up, Gil had no doubt the man was right. The real question was, how was the building still standing, its skeleton structure shot to pieces and slightly tilted sideways. A burning Pisa tower, without the tourists.

He couldn’t see Malcolm anywhere around, which should have eased the churning inside his stomach. Instead, it grew in intensity, a feeling of urgency that Gil couldn’t shake off. “Mind if I take a look around?”

The busy captain merely nodded, his attention already on more important things. “Pull that truck back, you idiot!”

Gil had no idea what he was looking for. He felt like a fool, walking around in his pajamas, searching the grounds around a building that was about to collapse for something he couldn’t quite name.

He was about to end his nonsense actions when he saw the broken plastic. Even before he bent down to pick it up, Gil knew it was Malcolm’s phone.

“THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE!” the Lieutenant screamed at the top of his lungs, running back to the fire department captain.

“What?”

“THERE’S-there’s someone inside,” Gil breathed out as he neared the man, showing him the broken phone like it explained everything. “One of my men is inside! We need to search for him-he might be hurt!”

The captain’s eyes narrowed down, looking between the Lieutenant and the derelict structure. “No one’s getting in there-it’s just too dangerous,” he pointed out very calmly, despite the gravity of his words. “I’m sorry.”

The more the captain spoke, the more Gil was sure that Malcolm was inside that building. A small part of his brain screamed at him that he was asking these men to risk their lives over nothing more than a gut feeling, but his heart had no ears and his brain wasn’t listening.

All he could think of was little ten year old Malcolm, looking up at him with those big blue eyes, warning him that his father was going to kill him.

His feet started moving without a real conscious decision coming from in his mind. Gil just turned around and raced towards the flames.

Number three was Malcolm’s overconfidence in himself. He was good at what he did, but he was still human, which meant that sometimes he was just plain wrong. It didn’t happen often, but it only needed to happen once at the wrong time for Malcolm to get someone or himself killed.

Gil’s vision was down to near nothing as soon as he entered the building. Huge blocks of concrete had fallen down, blocking most of the way, so he couldn’t really move much deeper into the place. He couldn’t dare consider the possibility of Malcolm being in one of the upper floors. If he was, the Lieutenant had no way to reach him and the kid was already as good as dead.

He hadn’t been thinking when he raced inside. There had been no consideration for the smoke and the fact that he wouldn’t be able to either see or even breath once he entered the building. All Gil had taken in account was that he had a gut feeling and his gut had never let him down.

He searched the ground floor almost blindly, walking deeper into the building. The walls roared around him, the fire like a living beast, warning that it was going to take a bite out of him.

Gil stumbled across Malcolm by sheer dumb luck.

Reason number four was the kid’s guarding angel. There was no other way to explain how lucky he was, how he could escape the messes he got himself in by the skin of his teeth so often and so effortlessly.

Maybe it was the universe trying to compensate him for the fact that his father was a serial killer, or maybe Malcolm did have an angel watching over him. Maybe it was simply those who loved him taking care of him and watching over him, because Lord knows, the kid would not look out after himself.

As Gil grabbed the profiler under his arms, he had no idea if the kid was alive and no time to check. All he knew was that, if they didn’t get out of that place in the next few seconds, they would both be dead.

The Lieutenant coughed, his lungs protesting as smoke kept replacing oxygen. Malcolm wasn’t exactly a heavy guy, but even his slight build was straining the older man’s strength, sapping his energy as fast as the fire raged. Gil looked around, lost on where he had come from. Under the soot everything looked the same.

Mudd rained down on them, the water from the powerful hoses outside and the concrete dust inside mixed in a heavy batter that added weight to Gil’s already impossible task and made the ground slippery. It felt like he was trying to walk on an ice ring.

By the third time that he tripped over his own feet on the wet grass, nature having invaded the ground floor of the building long ago, Gil lost his footing and landed on Malcolm, eliciting a painful grunt from the younger man. “Good to know you’re alive, kid,” the Lieutenant managed to weeze between coughs. “How about waking up and giving me a hand?”

His only answer was the distant sound of walls cracking. The whole building shivered and Gil knew that their time had finally run out. In a last, desperate effort, he all but hauled Malcolm over his shoulder and raced the remaining distance to reach outside.

Blinded by the smoke and dust in the air, Gil barely noticed as several extra pairs of hands came to his aid, running away from the building.

They kept on running, even as the ground shook under their feet and the loud roar of twisted metal and broken concrete filled the air. When Gil dared to look back, the building wasn’t there anymore, just a big ball of white dust rising in the air, like a small atomic bomb mushroom cloud.

“You okay?” someone asked.

The Lieutenant didn’t bother answering over the coughs racking his chest. He didn’t have the breath to do it. Instead, he turned his attention to Malcolm.

The kid was covered in soot from head to toe, but still it was impossible to miss the large patch of red soaking his middle. His chest was so still... “Get the paramedics in here,” Gil rasped, his hand flying to Malcolm’s neck.

His fingers trembled as he pressed them against the dirty skin. Underneath his touch, he couldn’t feel a damn thing. “Come on, kid…”

“Sir, you need to step aside,” one of the firefighters commanded, gloved hands grabbing hold of Gil’s shoulders, ready to push him away.

Gil couldn’t. He couldn’t walk away until he was sure that the kid was alive.

Number five was the fact that Malcolm never gave up. And while that could be a good thing, with Malcolm it was something that bordered on obsession. The profiler’s need to uncover the truth, to chase killers, to help those who could not help themselves. Nothing and no one could stop him when Malcolm got a whiff of a clue, when he had his sights on the killer.

That kind of tunnel vision often led to situations where Malcolm’s life came in second, a long distance away from solving the case. And now Gil could feel no pulse under his fingertips because Malcolm had gone in search of the killer on his own and ended up in a burning building with what looked like a gunshot wound on his stomach.

“There’s- I can’t find a pulse,” Gil let out, lost on what to do, his mind going completely blank. His night had started with an innocent phone call from dispatch and now he was soaking wet, leaning over an unresponsive Malcolm. 

He should have known that Malcolm couldn’t simply leave it alone. Ten people had died on the killer’s latest hit, three more before that. They knew the bomber was escalating and that they were running out of time. The profiler had decided that he would not sleep until the killer had been caught.

Gil had disagreed.

The last thing he had said to the kid had been a threat, demanding that he get some rest on pain of pushing him away from the case. They had fought, words had been spoken that neither of them had truly meant.

“Please...help him,” Gil found himself saying as he allowed himself to be pushed away.

Malcolm looked so small and fragile, surrounded by all those men and women in heavy gear. When the paramedics started pressing down on Malcolm’s chest, Gil felt his own heart stop, desperately praying for one more miracle that night.

No one knew that Malcolm had been inside that building. For some reason that he could not understand, Gil had felt the desperate need to go inside, knowing without a doubt that he would find the kid in there. Such an improbable chain of events could have not all been just for him to pull out a corpse from that building. Fate, the universe,  _ God _ could not be so cruel to allow it all to be for naught.

“Come on, kid…” Gil whispered, even though no one could hear him. There were tears running down his face, but he couldn’t care less about hiding them. “Not like this…”

“I should put you up for charges,” the captain’s voice broke through the Lieutenant’s laser focus on Malcolm. “That was the most foolish thing I have ever seen any one doing,” he pointed out. Despite the harsh words, there was compassion in the man’s voice. It was clear that he had no real desire to charge the older man with anything, he just wanted to understand why a seasoned Lieutenant had just acted like a rookie. “What was he doing in there anyway?”

“Being a fool,” Gil whispered, closing his eyes. They were still doing compressions, numbers shouted in the air. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. It felt like a countdown to the end.

“So...you two related or something?”

The captain hadn’t meant it as a jab, implying that one fool had to be related to the next. He was just responding to what he was seeing. And what he saw screamed of family. He sat down next to the grieving man in silence.

“I love him like a son,” Gil confessed. “I never told him that…”

The captain nodded gravely. “Kids know,” he let out. “He knows,” he added with a nod to the commotion.

Despite the fact that the paramedics were still working on convincing Malcolm’s heart to start working again, the captain had referred to the profiler in the present tense. Gil could’t have been more grateful to anyone in that very moment.

“We got a pulse!” 

~@~

Malcolm was running. He had no idea why he was running, he just knew that he couldn’t stop, no matter how tired he felt.

And he felt so tired.

His chest hurt everytime he tried to pull in some air and his legs were on fire. Yet, he could not stop. Despite not knowing the reason, he was sure that if he stopped, he would be dead.

There were people around him, faceless strangers that tried to grab him as Malcolm ran by, clingy hands that burned as they made contact. He couldn’t stop them from touching him, but he could try and run away from them.

So, Malcolm ran.

He was sure he had been running for hours when he reached the tall wall. From one side to the other, the wall seemed to run for miles, so long that he could not see its end on either side. Jumping over it was impossible, for the edge was so up high that he couldn’t even tell if it was there.

Malcolm looked back, knowing that whatever he was running from was going to catch up with him eventually. He needed to go past that wall. Now!

But there was no way around. No way over. He was trapped!

Frustrated, Malcolm pounded his fists against the solid surface. Over and over again, until he was sure his hands would turn bloody. To the wall, he was nothing but an ant, defying a shoe.

“Easy, kid,” a familiar voice called out to him. “Everything’s okay.”

Malcolm ignored the voice. There was no one else in there, and the voice had no clue about what was coming. He needed to get away and that wall was in his way.

The profiler kicked and punched at the wall, not caring about the bloody handprints he was leaving behind. 

The last time his fist connected, he felt something crack.

Malcolm looked at his hand, half expecting to see a broken bone, but there was nothing wrong with his fingers. He looked at the wall next. In the place where he had punched it, Malcolm could see a small crack with a loose piece in the middle.

Carefully, he took it out. Like an egg being cracked from the inside by a newborn bird, the fissure started to expand, cracks running the length of the wall like silent lightning bolts.

Malcolm enjoyed a small moment of victory as he realized that the whole wall was going to come crumbling down. And then he realized that the whole wall was going to come crumbling down on  _ him _ .

The second the thought registered in his mind, the wall started to collapse. Malcolm could do nothing more than shrink down and wait to be crushed.

“Easy, kid...you’re safe now.”

Malcolm opened his eyes to darkness and a series of loud beeping noises that seemed angry at him. He looked around, searching the unfamiliar place for the familiar voice. He couldn’t see anyone.

He wanted to scream and call out for help, but there was something shoved inside his throat, making it impossible to speak or breath. Instinctively, he reached out with his hands to free his mouth from the intrusive object, but his wrists barely rose two inches up before their movement was cut short by restraints.

Malcolm panicked, his chest heaving hard, desperate for a breath that he could not take, strapped to a strange bed he could not escape.

“You’re in the hospital,” the voice came again. “There is a tube inside your throat to help you breathe...just relax and let the machine do its job.”

Someone grabbed his right hand. Malcolm looked up, finally finding the owner of the voice.

Gil.

Their eyes met over the contraption tapped to Malcolm’s mouth as the younger man tried to follow Gil’s instructions and resist the urge to fight the tube.

“That’s it,” the older man encouraged. “The doctor is coming soon to take that off...you just need to hold on for a few more seconds.”

Malcolm nodded. Slowly, his mind was catching up on what was going on. He remembered his desperate attempt to get out of the burning building and find his phone, of wanting nothing more than to call Gil. However, he didn’t quite remember actually succeeding.

Looking closely at the Lieutenant, Malcolm could see the subtle redness to Gil’s face, his goatee slightly singed on the right side, like he had stood too close to a fire. The fire that Malcolm had caused when he blew himself and the killer up.

How had Gil known where to find him? Was he responsible for Gil’s condition?

His eyes must have translated all too well the thoughts running around his mind, because he felt Gil squeeze his hand harder. “I’m fine, kid,” the older man reassured him. “And you will be fine too.”

Malcolm wanted to search Gil’s face for any lies, but he was too tired for that. Instead, he grabbed on to Gil’s fingers and allowed himself to drift back to sleep.

~@~

“Now, repeat after me,” Gil ordered. “I…”

Malcolm’s furious gaze was intended to fulminate the older man, but the effect was somewhat dulled by the fact that he was dressed in a backless gown, sitting on a hospital bed and looking more pale than the sheets. On the table by his side rested a big, brown teddy bear with a red heart where the words ‘Get well soon!’ flashed in golden letters. Edrisa’s gift.

“I can wait all day,” Gil reminded the younger man, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Fine…” Malcolm hissed, scrunching down on his bed. The movement must have unsettled the stitches on his side because his face contorted into a scowl of pain for a moment before returning to the regular scowl.  _ “I _ …”

“Solemnly swear…”

The profiler rolled his eyes, translating very clearly what he thought of the whole situation. “ _ Solemnly swear _ …”

“That the next time I go off without calling for backup, I will allow my team to put me in cuffs and lock me in a cell for as long as it pleases them,” Gil finished, his eyes never wavering from the injured man.

Malcolm’s left eyebrow rose across his forehead. “Kinky,” he voiced, a smug smile spreading across his lips as he looked from Gil to the rest of the team. Dani and JT looked far from amused as they stared back at him. “Fine!  _ The next time I go off without calling for backup, I will allow my team to put me in cuffs and lock me in a cell for as long as it pleases their kinky hearts!” _

“And don’t think we won’t do it,” JT warned. He had not been pleased when he learned the events of that evening, almost a week before. The fact that the killer’s body had later been recovered from the ruins of the collapsed building had not gained Malcolm that much redeeming points, as there was no excuse in the detective’s book for the crazy stunt the profiler had pulled. “Damn fool!”

Malcolm sobered up, knowing that he had messed up badly. More than that, once he learned that Gil had run into a burning building to save his sorry ass, Malcolm couldn’t help but think of what might have happened had the building come crashing down a few seconds earlier.

He could have killed Gil. He could have died. All because of a poor decision. “Trust me guys...this was the last time I failed to call for backup. I promise!”

“And…” Gil urged on.

Malcolm looked at him in confusion. He thought that the whole silly oath thing was done. “ _ And _ ?”

“I will resign from the team if I ever break my promise.”

Malcolm’s heart stopped inside his chest. He blinked, staring at the older man, waiting for him to crack a smile and tell him he was just kidding.

But Gil was serious. This time, Malcolm had succeeded in scaring him good. Scaring him into no more second chances.

He knew that Gil could kick him out of the team whenever he wanted. He was the Lieutenant, he had the power to do it. In fact, Malcolm knew that his position as the NYPD consultant relied solemnly on Gil’s word and consent.

But Gil also knew him. Once Malcolm said the words, he would live up to them and have no choice but to fulfill his promise. It was part of who Malcolm was, the long divide that put him worlds apart from his father.

Swallowing hard, Malcolm sat up straighter. He had no intention to let the team down, but this was a promise that required a lot of changing on his part. For him to start trusting others so openly and intrinsically was like asking someone to change the color of their eyes.

But he was willing to give it a try. “And I swear I will resign from the team if I ever break my promise,” he whispered, feeling the weight of those words settle hard over his heart.

He could do this. He had to. He didn’t need five reasons to justify that.

Three were more than enough.

The end

  
  
  
  



End file.
